The biggest mistake that an organization can make is to simply digitize existing services and call it Digital Transformation.
Digital Transformation is not about creating a website, adding online stores, creating social media accounts, social media posts, likes, retweets, nor is it the ubiquitous use of technology in an organization.
In the 1960s, Xerox Corporation held a dominant position in the photocopier market. The leadership at Xerox thought going digital would be too expensive. They insisted that the future of Xerox was in copy machines. They failed to understand that they were holding on to a business model that was soon going to be disrupted.
Digital Transformation is not about creating a website, adding online stores, creating social media accounts, social media posts, likes, retweets, or even the ubiquitous use of technology in an organization.
So, what is digital transformation?
Digital Transformation is a synonym for the pace of change occurring in organizations today driven by rapid adoption of technology. This, in turn, is causing rapid disruptions in every industry and in every corner of the world.
Disruption is literally happening at the speed of Innovation.
Legacy organizations fighting transformation are finding themselves isolated and irrelevant. Some legacy organizations have seen the big bold writing on the wall, while others just don’t seem to understand that their time is almost up.
Today, how internal and external customers engage with the organization is changing quickly because of technology adoption. This is forcing organizations to re-think how they can create new, sustainable, competitive advantage, and how they must change if they are to stay relevant.
In the last decade, we have seen three types of organizations emerge from the ashes of disruption – innovators, adopters, and copy-cats.
Those excelling are data-driven, strategic, and constantly innovating. Those surviving have good internal systems to maintain operational efficiency. Those failing are busy building websites and running digital campaigns but not addressing the strategic challenges facing the organization.
Digital Transformation is a journey not a destination.
It is a journey of strategic organizational change. It starts by leadership empowering internal teams with innovative tools to create highly responsive plans and a persistent culture of innovation that is enabled by technology.
Strategy creates competitive advantage. People and a culture of innovation sustains it. Technology is how it is delivered.
The Digital Transformation journey should be able to address the following areas for your organization: competitive advantage, customer engagement, digital capabilities, agile innovation, digital business strategy, people engagement & culture, business alignment, and the enabling technology at every stage of the journey.
The biggest mistake that an organization can make is to simply digitize existing services and call it Digital Transformation. That, simply, is not going to work for you.